1864.] SENATE— No. 22. 17 



has lately died of fever in one of our military hospitals. He 

 was a young man of excellent moral character and good abilities, 

 promising to do full justice to the liberality to which he had 

 been indebted for a situation at the Museum. Mr. Hartt has 

 been successfully working at the fossil Brachiopods, and is about 

 to resume his studies of those remaining, after a protracted 

 absence. I regret that Mr. Shaler, who also left the Museum 

 for the army, has not yet returned ; but I hope to see him back 

 next spring. Ill health has also taken away Mr. Allen from 

 his field of labors. I regret it the more since he had made excel- 

 lent progress in Ornithology and promised to become a valuable 

 assistant in the arrangement of the specimens of birds. He has 

 left unfinished a very interesting investigation upon the struc- 

 ture and arrangement of the feathers of birds. Mr. Niles is 

 now progressing rapidly with the systematic and faunal arrange- 

 ment of the Crinoids, and Mr. Horace Mann with that of the 

 tertiary shells. Mr. Guggenheim continues to be occupied with 

 the preparation of the skeletons, a large number of which have 

 been added in this way to the collection during the past year. 



The scientific value of all this work consists not only in the 

 accuracy of the identification of the specimens, and the careful 

 labelling of those selected for exhibition, but more particularly 

 in the separation of the systematic and faunal collections. 

 As I have already noticed on another occasion, I propose to 

 make the work now going on in the Museum subservient to a 

 thorough revision of the faunal distribution of the whole 

 animal kingdom. As far as the Echionoids are concerned, this, 

 survey is already complete, and much has been done, besides, 

 to determine the faunal limits of the Corals, the Fishes, and 

 some families of Insects, Crustacea and Mollusks. 



The liberality of the legislature in granting $10,000 for the 

 publication of an Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum, will 

 enable us to lay the results of these investigations before the 

 scientific world in an appropriate form, and thus extend the 

 usefulness of our institution beyond the limits of those who 

 have immediate access to its overcrowded rooms. It gives me 

 particular pleasure to state that the first part of this Catalogue 

 is already in the press, and I now submit to you proofs of some 

 of the plates and woodcuts already finished. I hope to have 

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